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HAVANA (AP) - Cuba awarded a posthumous medal to a soldier killed by conscripts who fled their base and later tried to hijack a plane to leave the island, an incident the government blamed on Washington's policies.
The soldier, Yoendris Gutierrez Hernandez, was on guard duty at a military base on April 29. Three deserters bayoneted him to death with stolen rifles after he refused to surrender his weapon, the Communist Party newspaper Granma reported Saturday.
In a somber ceremony in the eastern province of Granma, a medal for heroism was given to Gutierrez's parents. Acting President Raul Castro, also the island's defense minister, saluted the soldier's "bravery and rejection and opposition to the demands of three assailants who threatened him, demanding that he give them the weapon he used for military service."
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